This application claims the priority of German application 197 29 901.6-21, filed in Germany on Jul. 12, 1997, the disclosure of which is expressly incorporated by reference herein.
The invention relates to a vehicle door with a basic body in the form of a body-in-white that includes the exterior sheet metal, an interior trim, and a partial area within this interior trim with functional parts that are visible and/or operable from the vehicle interior.
In such a vehicle door, the invention is concerned with the problem of being able to locate the partial area within the door with high accuracy in terms of tolerance, especially when then partial area projects into a marginal area of the door intended to fit tightly against a part of the body located apart from the door.
This problem is solved according to certain preferred embodiments of the invention by providing a front vehicle door with a basic body in the form of a body-in-white that includes an outside sheet metal, a door interior trim, and a partial area with functional parts operable from a vehicle interior space, wherein the partial area is designed as a separate insert part that acts as reinforcement with respect to the remaining area of the door interior trim and is permanently connected with the body-in-white and the door interior trim, and constitutes a direct laterally abutting extension of a front vehicle instrument panel when in an in use position in a vehicle.
The invention is based on the following consideration.
The door interior trim, depending on the materials used fox this purpose, constitutes a unit that is intrinsically unstable, whose stability is achieved only by attaching it to the body (body-in-white) at the door. Because of this design, the mounting elements must in part be located at a distance that is too great for achieving sufficient stability. As a result, the door interior trim can reveal deviations from its installation position within the plane of the door. This results in problems with fit and hence with quality that can be partially overcome only by expensive finishing work. It is usually impossible to provide reinforcing elements on the back of the door trim because of the supporting structure of the door body and the limited space that results.
The insert part according to the invention, to be mounted directly on the basic body of the door, can be a plastic supporting part that can serve in this case in an advantageous manner as a stabilizing component, especially for partial areas of the door interior trim. As a result, increased reliability of fit is achieved in this area at the same time. This is especially important when the insert part is located inside the front door of a vehicle and forms there a laterally extended area of the instrument panel of the motor vehicle (7 in FIG. 3). The boundary area opposite the instrument panel is an area in which high accuracy of fit is absolutely necessary for esthetic reasons.